


if we fall, if we fly

by zanykingmentality



Category: Hana Yori Dango | Boys Over Flowers (TV)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, I love him, ji-hoo gets the ending he deserved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-08
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-05-03 19:25:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14575947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zanykingmentality/pseuds/zanykingmentality
Summary: I don't believe in the insomnia that tears apart my dreams.Whisper to me, dearest one. I will shield the rain from your face and the snow from your shoes.[ where Ji-Hoo learns to love himself and Jan-Di grows up. ]





	if we fall, if we fly

**Author's Note:**

> hi I didn't finish boys over flowers yet I got to episode 21 and have ever since been on a hiatus because I'm sad about Ji-Hoo :) 
> 
> he deserved better so I wrote a fic for him. Enjoy~

Maybe it starts in high school.

 

Senior year, almost out of here. Pick up after Red Cards, except for when they’re not as noticeable or Jun-Pyo has him stuck on a leash. If Ji-Hoo were more confident, he might almost call it _sadistic._

 

The story starts like this: he sees her, fists balled at her sides, screaming to the sky over a cement fence meant to keep things in. Her voice is a force of _nature_ , though, and it carries so far through the city Ji-Hoo could have _sworn_ Jun-Pyo heard it from here. He gets up from his resting place, equal parts irritated and intrigued, because she’s screaming the wrong name and waking up the entire world with her rage.

 

“Geum Jan-Di. You might want to get the name of the guy you hate right, next time.”

 

(In the future, Ji-Hoo sometimes misses that rage. But he looks next to him and realizes, maybe he likes this way a little bit better.)

 

The story goes better if this is when Ji-Hoo realizes. If this is when he breaks years-old habits and takes her hand in his, smiling in that way he does, and she smiles back at him. The story is nicer that way. Easier. Less unexpected twists and happenstances of fate, less of Ji-Hoo’s heart feeling like a crumpled tin can.

 

That’s not how it goes though, as much as he’d like to go back in time and fix it; in the end, he follows a girl to France, and learns that habitual hearts can always be broken. When it does, Jan-Di brings him back from peering too far over the cement ledge where he’d break a few limbs, and tells him: “ _Sunbae_ , you’re stronger than you give yourself credit for. You’re allowed to be selfish sometimes.”

 

They go out for a day. Not a date, he always has to remind himself, because somehow things have always been so easy with her it’s hard to forget they’re not _really_ together. They walk around town and look at shops and eat food from tiny family-owned restaurants that remind them both of the porridge shop Jan-Di works at. She points out the guy at the cashier and grins when she says his glasses are the same as her boss’s. Ji-Hoo can’t help but smile back, because Jan-Di has the kind of contagious smile that makes his heart constrict on itself with something he knows the name of but won’t dare say.

 

He lets wistfulness carry him away sometimes. Ji-Hoo has always been the pragmatic type: he knows what he can have and what he can not. He knows what he can make and what he can not. _This_ is neither here nor there, but he tries to convince himself through distant dreams where Gu Jun-Pyo stands aside because Ji-Hoo has never once asked for anything except _this_.

 

On a beach trip, he finds an anklet in the sand and presses it to his lips, because he doesn’t know if Jun-Pyo will forgive him for kissing her. Not that he regrets it. He’s seen enough to know that regrets are for those who don’t value their own lives, and while he hates himself for being a survivor he knows better than anyone how precious this time is. So he presses his lips to hers and kisses her. She tastes like salt-water and cherry chapstick, and Ji-Hoo should’ve only done this sooner, because he knew when he met her there was something that set her apart from people he knew. On a day when it feels like the sky is resting on his shoulders because she’s _sick_ and _tired_ and _malnourished_. He brings her hand to his lips and stays there for a while ― her skin is warm and his heart is cold, and it’s like she’s a crackling fire when the cold claws at his skin. He remembers how bright her eyes are when he picks her up from the clinic and smiles to himself, because as long as Geum Jan-Di is happy so is he.

 

.

 

Or maybe it starts in university.

 

Med school, year two. She’s just gotten in and he doesn’t think he’s ever been prouder of anyone in twenty-something years. She doesn’t get bullied here; no giant groups of insufferable privileged high schoolers throwing food and water-balloons and forcing her lips in a frown. It’s nicer than high school, and they get a sort of freedom that was always forbidden back then. They can walk and talk without rich girls throwing insults over their shoulders.

 

Jun-Pyo visits the hospital to see her every so often, until midway through her first year. “Did something happen?” Ji-Hoo asks.

 

“We don’t work together,” Jan-Di responds. “Well, figuratively. I guess.” She’s not as heartbroken about it as she was in high school, when she first realized they weren’t the perfect match she wanted them to be. (But she’s always called Ji-Hoo her soulmate, anyway.) And maybe it’s because this time it’s on _her_ terms, instead of by flashing plane lights and a broken promise sent by text.

 

They both remember the way his face looked whenever he saw them. He knew. Ji-Hoo and Jan-Di have always _worked_. Have always clicked like a violinist and an accompanist should. Play in perfect harmonies and melodies for each other, for themselves. When one is off, both are off. That is music. That is _them_.

 

Maybe he’s selfish to focus on what could have been, once.

 

“Can you take me somewhere?” Her eyes are rimmed red and he knows she’s only been pretending to be nonchalant about a broken heart. He says nothing, taking her hand and leading her to the motorcycle, the one he’s had since high school and might be getting old now, but it has too many memories riding along that he can’t bring himself to buy a new one.

 

(He remembers riding up to her walking barefoot away from Gu Jun-Pyo’s house, and he lends her his shoes to carry her home. Seo-Hyun always used to say a girl’s shoes were her most important asset: they would take her where she wanted to go. Ji-Hoo hoped his shoes could help Jan-Di go wherever she needed to be. And hopefully, she’d take him along too.)

 

But with med school comes more responsibilities. Jan-Di has her own apartment now, but she stays over so often to study and hang out that sometimes Ji-Hoo forgets they don’t still live together. The guest bedroom has become _Jan-Di’s room_ , the seat next to his at the table has become _Jan-Di’s seat_ , and the seat next to him on the sofa has become _Jan-Di’s study spot._ It’s almost amazing how neatly her every edge fits into the puzzle of home, except it’s not, because it’s Jan-Di and he loves her and if she demanded the world of him he would find a way to get it for her.

 

“Why don’t you just officially move in?” Ji-Hoo suggests one night, when they’re so close their breaths mingle and there’s no way this is still platonic, but he pretends because he’s good at maintaining it. She doesn’t even try to act like she’s not taken aback by his words, face going red. Still, she doesn’t move away from him, and he can still feel shuddering breaths against his skin.

 

“I don’t want to be imposing too much, _sunbae_ ,” she says, in that half-smile half-awkward way she says things when she knows what she wants but doesn’t know how to say it, or won’t let herself want it. “Plus, I need to learn how to be independent. I can’t rely on you for everything.”

 

(If he were Jun-Pyo, he would say, _yes, you can_.

 

He is not Jun-Pyo.)

 

Ji-Hoo takes her hand and draws their fingertips up to the cord around his neck where his mother’s ring rests against his collarbone. Jan-Di’s face is the hue of a cherry, and Ji-Hoo has an insatiable desire to taste cherry-red on his lips. “You know where I’ll be,” he says. “If you need to.”

 

“Thank you.” Her voice is whisper-soft, and they’re past the point where they need to thank each other for being there, even if she does it anyway. Sometimes it serves as a little reminder to Ji-Hoo that he’s not alone anymore. That he doesn’t have to pretend anymore. Slowly, he opens up.

 

.

 

Friday night is baking night.

 

When Ji-Hoo lived completely alone, he would watch baking shows on days when he wasn’t too busy agonizing about all things blue and grey. He has never been the most adept at making pastries ― cooking is more his forte, and baking requires a precision he’s never bothered to learn ― but Jan-Di gets very into them when she sees it on the TV, even if her English is lacking and she doesn’t understand what’s going on half of the time. After a while, she decides she’s hungry enough to try her hand at baking, so they spend hours in the kitchen mixing up what flour and sugar they haven’t already spilled on the floor.

 

Jan-Di proves to be surprisingly adept at baking. But then, it shouldn’t be a surprise to Ji-Hoo: she’s always had a knack for doing things she set her mind to.

 

One Valentines Day, she makes him cupcakes with little swirls of frosting on top and music note sprinkles.

 

He remembers her making cookies with faces on them, made for Jun-Pyo, ending in his house. But everything tastes better this way: when she holds the spoon up to his lips for taste-testing, when they dance hand-in-hand across the kitchen floor to the music in their heads. They play harmonious chords, anyway.

 

On White Day, he makes her pancakes. For old times’ sake. She grins at them and then him and says, “You still remember the recipe.”

 

“Of course I do.” He leans on the counter and watches her with twinkling eyes. “I could never forget.”

 

At this point, he might be talking about more than a recipe.

 

.

 

Well, whenever it starts, Ji-Hoo pretends nothing changes in the way she looks at him, from immediate comfort to something glittering with more, something he won’t let himself analyze because there’s no way he could ever even dream of hoping. Ji-Hoo has never been a dreamer, one full of hope; everything he’s ever loved has always been wrenched away from his tight grasp. But not her.

 

(Yet.)

 

_“I never want to be powerless and see another man save you.”_ Jun-Pyo said, years ago. Ji-Hoo has always known that feeling; it’s always been his job to protect Jan-Di, to love her and support her through all things, and kiss her cuts when they bled. Most of the time, those cuts were results of Jun-Pyo’s knife, sweet intentions made sharp by misunderstanding. Ji-Hoo could do it better. But he’s never made a move, because above all he respects Jan-Di’s wishes, and if Jun-Pyo is what she wants then it’s Jun-Pyo she will get. Ji-Hoo would make sure of it.

 

But he can’t really tell who she wants, anymore. (Unless it’s him. But it isn’t. It could never be.)

 

.

 

A sweet kiss. A foreboding lamp-post. A sign of what’s to come, and where it will begin.

 

Or: where it will finally solidify, coalescing into an amalgamation of hope in Ji-Hoo’s throat, something he’s numbed himself from feeling all this time.

 

They’re walking home from buying groceries. It’s one of the rare occasions that Jan-Di’s going to her apartment, a tiny room in a huge apartment complex, but it’s not that far from Ji-Hoo’s house and he knows how much her independence means to her, so he’s fine with it. Even if he’d like to be with her every second of the day, in sleep and music and movie nights with microwave popcorn.

 

They’re in university, on track to follow in Grandfather’s footsteps. Jan-Di walks next to him, grocery bag in hand that she won’t let him carry for her. Under the streetlight, she stops. Ji-Hoo only looks at her; he doesn’t ask her to say anything, nor will he ever, unless she tells him to. He’d wait a lifetime for her, even if it meant greying out without so much as any form of sympathy. It’s the least he can do for her, she who pulled him out from drowning in love that was only a force of _habit_ , love that never meant anything more than Ji-Hoo’s misguided perception and a kiss bathed in orange light. When he first started to wonder if what he had was not what he needed, but only what the fragments of a child scorned by death yearned for from the only one who’d ever loved him and stayed. But Seo-hyun could never have been his answer.

 

He can’t even imagine what it would be like, now, to live in France with her and her lover, whoever it may be at this point, helpless and watching her love a man other than him, nothing but rustling sheets and quiet, panting breaths the only consolation for him. A sinful ending for the boy who defied death, even as it stole everything from him.

 

“ _Sunbae._ ” She says, and the raw emotion behind it surprises Ji-Hoo, at least a little bit, every time. How she can refer to him and feel _so much_ about it, when he’s resigned himself to ignore all feelings that come his way when they regard her, unless necessary to keep her safe. “Do dreams really come true?”

 

Ji-Hoo looks at her with the surprised expression he always fixes her with, lips parted slightly and eyebrows raising minutely. He is far from the right person to ask about this sort of thing. His dreams have always been to have his family back, and as soon as it came true it was whisked away again by some cruel puppeteer of fate. “Maybe,” he says, despite all his instincts. “If you dream hard enough.”

 

Jan-Di is uncharacteristically silent. By now Ji-Hoo is used to the urge to press his lips against hers in moments like these; he knows how to resist it. It’s been years, after all. She grabs hold of his collar and his ears flush, as they always have, instead of his face. Hesitate, hesitate. Does she need to think twice?

 

She pulls him down and presses her lips to his.

 

At first he thinks he’s dreaming. But Jan-Di’s lips are rougher than he imagined, worn with nervous chewing, and she smells more like jasmine today than usual. Little things he usually knows, larger than life, breathing through his nose. For a brief moment, he is beautiful with her.

 

By now, Jan-Di is a much more experienced kisser than the first time their lips touched. Back then they were stock still, believing a kiss to be a simple touch of lips; it’s better now, her moving against him, his hands ghosting against her hips, a soft exhale curling in the minute crevice between them. He breathes it in, loves the feeling of her fingers twisting in his hair. Exhilarates in her warmth, her eyelashes brushing along his cheeks.

 

He thinks it almost a tragedy that once upon a time, these lips were Jun-Pyo’s.

 

Life is fraught with tragedy. Twists and turns, over and under and sideways and all ways. Ji-Hoo knows better than anyone how one day everything you knew can change so drastically it leaves you reeling, how the next day the one you love is wrenched from your grasping fingertips. Fingertips against her sleeves, her arms, her hands, feeling loving _searching_. He will not leave her. He will protect her.

 

To err in love is the greatest sin of all. (And he is a beautiful sinner.)

 

.

 

“What are you talking about, _sunbae_?” Jan-Di’s lips are turned down in a mock pout, arms crossed. “Guk is being silly. She won’t even listen to him!”

 

Ji-Hoo shakes his head. “You don’t understand her pain, Jan-Di. She was sent away after being considered a disgrace to her family. She was led to believe he didn’t care about her.”

 

“They’re both being stupid. Why don’t they just _talk_ to each other?”

 

“It’s not that simple, sometimes.” Ji-Hoo shakes his head, small smile quirking at his lips. Leave it to Jan-Di to see things plain and clear, as they are. Ji-Hoo points out the subtleties. It’s part of how they work. Their system. ( _Their_ system.)

 

He threads his fingers with hers. Finally, after years of waiting and loving and bearing the brunt of excruciating wistfulness, this is right. All conscious thought aside, Ji-Hoo’s instincts have always gravitated toward _her_. Has always yearned to listen to her heartbeat thrumming under her skin, trace his fingers over her pulse. Loved to see her smile. As long as he’s known her, she’s been part of him. From an annoying presence shouting over the heads of passersby to curling up to him on the couch. Eggshells scattered in her hair to a carefree laugh, joyous in the threads of its tapestry. To dream of anything other than her is unthinkable.

 

“Isn’t it, though?” She looks him in the eyes, unwavering, unfaltering. “It doesn’t have to be complicated. If you just tell people how you feel.” She’s referring to him, years ago.

 

Ji-Hoo hums noncommittally, bring her hand up to his lips and feeling her skin under his breath. “I quite like the way things are now.” His voice is soft but she hears him anyway, cheeks flaring cherry-red, eyes darting. Her gaze settles on the spot where his breath meets the back of her hand, his lips just barely grazing the skin there. Jan-Di cups his cheeks with the palms of her hands, mesmerized ― he can tell from the spark in her eye, the one that shines in dim light. Even at night, when the clouds cover the sky. Her lips, warm and soft, press gently on the skin between his eyes. The hardened warrior girl turned soft by love. It makes her stronger. Her hands no longer tremble when she sees him, guilt and a rejected love glinting from the shadows. Now, they are steady. Now, they are strong.

 

Now, they are flawless. 

**Author's Note:**

> the show Jan-Di and Ji-Hoo have a debate about near the end is called 12 Years Promise, it is not as agonizing as Boys Over Flowers but it comes pretty close
> 
> this was not enough to heal my emotions and it might take me like I don't know a year to recover enough to finish the show? but I Will Do It.


End file.
